Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

It's not like it's a gas pump at all though. A gas pump spends a lot of energy to move liquid from a reservoir. An electric charger is "merely" a plug or an outlet to an electric circuit. Existing outlets work just fine! We've made these shiny free standing things with crazy cables and fun new connectors that sometimes connect to more exotic circuits with higher voltages (though that's not guaranteed, I've seen Level 1 chargers in the fancy charger form factor that may as well just be a wall plug).

Yeah, electricity has a cost, but when was the last time you checked your utility rates? Electricity itself is stupid cheap, it's a commodity, as it should be. Depending on city and time of day, you are talking dimes per kilowatt-hour. When was the last time you were asked to pay 45 cents for the energy you used to charge your phone in a café, restaurant, or at an airport?

For mostly one-off, random charges at places you are only at for a couple of hours, existing parking costs can and should cover it.

Sure, you do that every day for a month and those cents add up to dollars, and that's why a lot of the chargers are more like clubs where you pay monthly dues. Which is a business model that almost works as intended, except to really work well it should just be part of your monthly utility bill with your electric company with no extra middle men in the way.

But right now the vast majority of public chargers, at least in the US, are costing a whole lot more than the raw electricity prices. They've got tons of service fees they cost to pay for their "subsidized" installation costs. It is a bit of a racket, and should be better regulated.

Which is also why it's a psychological game they are playing right now to make you think that you need expensive chargers everywhere, because it is marketing that makes them (outrageous amounts of) money. The wall outlet at your home is good enough. A wall outlet from your employer would be good enough. An electrician can install an extra outlet on a circuit for sometimes dozens of dollars (after the basic service charges of making an appointment), and if you are more the DIY sort you can pick up most of what you need in a Lowe's or Home Depot and watch a YouTube video or three. You probably don't need to invest thousands of dollars into a gas pump looking charger. If you want to worry about the cost of electricity you are adding to the electric bill of whatever building it is you don't even have to install an extra meter, just do the math, round up a bit and pay that. While you are doing the math, maybe do the math on everybody's cell phone charging while they are in the building?

Yes, there's going to be a need/use case for superchargers at Level 3+, especially for long distance travel, but all the public chargers in the middle (Level 1 and Level 2) that are fancier than just a boring old wall outlet are in many ways a psychological game that charging is more of a service and less of a commoditized utility than it actually is. Electricity doesn't magically get 5000% more expensive because it's coming out of a machine made up to look like a gas pump with lightning bolts painted on the side and a fancy cable with a silly looking connector.

Tesla did a 7:23 in a heavily modified testing vehicle that has big extra air intakes for cooling, racing slicks, a massive rear diffuser, bigger spoiler, and is believed to have 3 engines.

For comparison, a front-wheel-drive stock Renault Megane RS does 7:40. Mercedes did 7:25 in a stock 4-door coupe last year, the AMG GT 63S. The stock supercars are down below the 7:00 mark mostly.

In the non-stock category, the record is 5:19 by one of Porsche's modified LMP1 cars.

If you look up how a stall speed converter works, you'll see that an automatic transmission delivers torque at a non-zero engine RPM even if the wheels are at zero RPM. The lowest you will go on the Duramax is around 1000 RPM, where you get 600 Nm torque.

"Electricity itself is stupid cheap"

Yeah, yeah...the DC fast chargers though? I saw where somebody said they were charged like $10 for enough electricity to drive less than 20 miles. I don't know if that is really representative, but what feels right to you or anybody in terms of price is even less meaningful than one random data point.

Gas stations can sell gas for minimal cost usually due to having a convenience store with high margins attached. You can charge at home due to having a connection to the grid, a house, and wiring, all of which cost substantial money beyond the per-kwh charge. So regardless of what charging "really" costs, your reasons for why it should be essentially free seem obviously flawed to me.

I'm not saying that it should be "essentially free", I'm saying there is far less competition than there should be, competition should be easy and a lot more prevalent, and part of that is the very hurdle that people think we need to install electric chargers like gas pumps in the gas pump business model only as big installations of just fast chargers, because right now we aren't doing that well either. To be doing the gas pump business model well: Yes, a lot more fast chargers should be working with convenience stores and restaurants and what have you and should be value added to higher margin industries.

The "parking meter" business model is also a valid strategy. My complaint with that business model, if its not apparent enough yet, is not that they are charging more for that business model, but that they aren't being transparent about it and double and triple dipping. If you want to charge $5-$15/hour parking, that's fine, that's a parking fee. Don't call it "electricity fees", because that's not what that is. Also, don't charge me $5-15/hour parking at both the Gate and the Meter (Charger), because that's $10-$30/hour parking and your signs are wrong.

But the further point is that those aren't the only business models. You don't need fast chargers everywhere, because cars spend most of their lives parked and the electric grid is everywhere, if we could just drive enough business models that encourage "slow" chargers everywhere we "win" when it comes to competition. Utilities make great amenities to bundle with other products, services, employment relationships.

Right now too, there's a lot of "worst of both worlds" business models, at least in the US. I've seen grocery stores with both free parking lots and low margin gas pumps, and yet very high electric parking fees. Some of that is simply because the same grocery stores that just spent millions in becoming their own gas stations are outsourcing their chargers to third parties because they don't have to compete on margins yet, and they aren't paying attention to what the chargers are costing, and how it affects the public perception of their overall amenities just yet. I suppose we'll know when electric is finally on their radars when you can use "gas points" for electric rates.